Writing a letter, article, book, or invitation, or sending an email or a text message?
This site offers help on typing accented letters and other non-standard characters/symbols,
in a variety of programs and on a variety of devices (phone/tablet, laptop, Windows, Mac, Android).

Windows, Using Roman Alphabets(Note that the various versions of Windows (Vista, Windows 7 and 10) vary in the details and vocabulary
but have somewhat similar methods.)

Because individual applications such as word processors or
HTML codes have their own schemes (Word,, HTML)
they are less likely to be 100% transferable to other software applications.
However, most Windows applications,
including word processors, will accept these methods:

Microsoft Windows allows a number of different keyboard languages
and layouts. Installation of the "typical", or "default" options provides
capabilities for French, Spanish, and other Western European languages.
Windows info.

In Windows 7, to change the keyboard languages and layout, follow these steps. - Click Start-->Control Panel-->Region and Language--> Keyboards and Languages.
- Click the Change Keyboards... button. This opens a window called "Text Services and Input Languages".
- Click on the Add button (in the General tab). Scroll to the desired language. Click OK and then Apply.
- Finally, if you wish this to be the default choice, select it in the box call Default input language and click Apply again.
- A language bar should appear on the taskbar in the lower right where you can choose among the keyboards you have added.

This site
has info for Win 10.The quick version is windows icon at bottom left, Settings, click Time and Language, then
Region and Language, then + sign or English.

Keyboard
layouts for many languages are available. However, they usually do not
follow the "QWERTY" layout and some characters, especially punctuation,
will not correspond to those printed on your keys. French uses "AZERTY"
with letters a/q and z/w interchanged compared to the US keyboard.

for layout
charts for several languages.
Once the language keyboards
are installed, using alt+shift or a designated variation rotates through
them (adjustable by changes after pressing the "Key Settings" button. Click the taskbar language icon to switch
to another language.

Note that this maintains the "qwerty" layout. However, the modifier
keys ` ' " ~ ^ must sometimes be followed by
pressing the space bar when they are actually intended. The system
can accept words requiring an apostrophe, such as it's,
without the space bar.

If you are having punctuation key troubles
such as your computer's quote and apostrophe key behaving strangely,
the cause may be that your keyboard was accidentally set to the
International English Keyboard. The solution is to reset it to a
standard English or United States keyboard.

Alt Key Codes (also called Alt number or altnum)

Those who use only a few characters, but often and in many applications,
may prefer to keep the default United States English keyboard and memorize
a few Alt key codes. This method uses the Alt key plus a four digit
number entered via the numeric keypad, with Num Lock on. The modified
letter appears after the keys are pressed and released. For touch-typers, the
disadvantage is having to move their hands to the number pad on the
right of the keyboard. Examples follow. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this
works in most programs, even in email and filenames.
Note that some laptops have a "hidden" numeric keypad.

This is useful for the infrequent accent or symbol.
It is located at Start - Programs - Accessories - System Tools -
Character Map (OR click Start, Run, and type charmap). After
choosing a font, double click the desired character(s). After clicking
Copy, return to your document and paste. Some fonts (such as Symbol,
Webding, and Wingding) provide Greek, icons, arrows and symbols. This
system may fail if a combination of keystrokes, as seen in
the lower right of the window, has been reserved for another application.

PopChar
is an improvement over the Character Map. When you need a special
character, click the "P" box in the taskbar to display a table of
characters. Select the desired character and it instantly appears in
your document. HTML symbols are also available.

MS Word uses an extremely intuitive approach giving it advantages similar to
(but perhaps less universal than) the International English Keyboard.
Note that sometimes the software adds its own accent marks (as in café), perhaps as part of spell checking.

1. Press CTRL and one of the punctuation keys ` ' , ~ : ^
that most closely resembles the accent needed.
2. Release the two keys pressed in Step 1.
3. Press the letter to be modified and the accented character will appear.

Thus Ctrl+: with u gives ü and Ctrl+, with C gives Ç.

The following chart came from MS Word help/index/characters/inserting/type international. Newer versions have slightly different wording such as help/index/character, then click on Insert an
international character by using a shortcut key. Note that some keys such as & require a shift key also.

à, è, ì, ò, ù - À,
È,
Ì, Ò, Ù

CTRL+` (ACCENT GRAVE), the letter

or the LETTER

á, é, í, ó, ú, ý -
Á,
É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý

CTRL+' (APOSTROPHE), the letter

â, ê, î, ô, û Â, Ê,
Î,
Ô, Û

CTRL+^ (CARET), the letter

ã, ñ, õ Ã, Ñ,
Õ

CTRL+~ (TILDE), the letter

ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ Ä,
Ë, Ï,
Ö, Ü, Ÿ

CTRL+: (COLON), the letter

å, Å

CTRL+@, a or A

æ, Æ

CTRL+&, a or A

œ, Œ

CTRL+&, o or O

ç, Ç

CTRL+, (COMMA), c or C

ð, Ð

CTRL+' (APOSTROPHE), d or D

ø, Ø

CTRL+/, o or O

¿

ALT+CTRL+?

¡

ALT+CTRL+!

ß

CTRL+&, s

Math and other Symbols

Word 2010
has excellent features which one can reach by choosing the Insert Tab
and then going to the symbols section of the "ribbon". Clicking on
"Equation" provides about ten built-in equations including the area of
a circle and the quadratic equation. Clicking on the Π
above "Equation" opens a ribbon of math terms similar to those in the
2003/2007 math equation editor. The drop-down arrows lead to many more
terms. Clicking on "Symbol" results in a variety of those, many of
which can be pasted into other software.Click here for a chart of math and music symbols using the alt plus 4 digit codes..

Some Word 2010 features are similar to Word 2003/2007 where many non-English characters, as well as some icons are found in
the Insert menu, then select Symbol and More Symbols. Within this Symbol Window, the font Lucida Sans
Unicode
provides many accented and other characters for numerous languages.The
Wingding and ZDingbats fonts have many other characters. The Character
Map (Start-All Programs-Accessorries-System Tools; right click to pin
it to the Start Menu) also has these fonts.

Word's Microsoft Equation 3.0 editor which can compose complex
equations is available on the Insert menu - object (in the text section). If it is not
installed, you may have to uninstall Word and reinstall Word with the editor.
Purchasing a more convenient math editor such as Math
Type is advised for those who write equations often.

More Math tips for MS Word:
*The Symbol font (in the Home tab) also has many math characters. For example, after changing
to the Symbol font, press the tilde key at upper left, without the
shift key. You should see a bar. Then type another key such as s; the
result for s is a lower case Greek sigma below the bar. If you need an
x or X or other letter under the bar, change the font back to a text
font such as Times Roman, and then type x or X.
*For superscripts, such
as xn: type x, then press and hold Ctrl,
Shift, =. Then type n. To go back to normal letters, press and hold
Ctrl, Shift, =. Subscripts are similar but omit the Shift key.

Word Perfect has spell checking, thesaurus, grammar, and
hyphenation for numerous languages. Another feature is
creating a custom keyboard. However, the remapped keyboard may only work within the WordPerfect application.

In a software application such as Dreamweaver,
one can use the International English keyboard.
Also, Dreamweaver has Insert - special characters in the menu
bar. The shareware application NoteTab provides another method as well as other useful features.

NoteTab - free
Notepad improvement and a handy HTML editor. The clipbook library and the pasteboard are
incredible time savers whether you create web pages, write source code, send
e-mail, take notes, analyze text, read files, or do anything related to text.
Price is between free and $20 depending on the version and features.

PopChar Win
- displays a table of characters and HTML symbols which are easily
moved into documents.